“It feels good,” the Dodgers first baseman said of the back injury that sent him to the DL. “I’m not playing in pain. But I haven’t been playing baseball games.”

Gonzalez hasn’t played a baseball game since June 11. Since then, he has two examinations on the herniated disc in his back, received an epidural injection to relieve the pain and gone through countless hours of physical therapy and core-strengthening exercises.

He will start playing games again next week. Gonzalez is scheduled to go through a simulated-game session before the Dodgers’ game on Sunday then joined Triple-A Oklahoma City to begin a minor league injury-rehabilitation assignment next week while the Dodgers are on the road. The choice of Triple-A is partially “logistics-driven and travel, things like that, (but) a little bit the competition” as well, according to Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.

Gonzalez said he is planning to stay on rehab for the full 20 days allotted to position players as a way to fully test the back. He wants to play “four or five” games in a row or four in five days to see how his back responds.

In second place, 1 1/2 games behind the Colorado Rockies, when Gonzalez went on the DL for the second time this season, the Dodgers have gone 34-6 in his absence, building a 13-game lead in the National League West and are 39-5 when Cody Bellinger starts at first base this season.

“It’s been great. It’s always great when the team is playing well,” Gonzalez said of watching it from the bench – an unfamiliar perspective for a player who played 1,745 of a possible 1,782 games over the past 11 seasons. “There’s no need to rush back when things are going so well. You don’t want to mess anything up. … When things are rolling you just sit back and enjoy the show.”

When he is ready to return, Gonzalez said “the hope” is he can add to what the Dodgers have going.

“That’s the plan,” he said.

Kershaw’s status

For the second consecutive day, left-hander Clayton Kershaw was on the field playing catch before the Dodgers’ game. The progress just five days after he left his most recent start with a lower back strain gives the Dodgers reason to be optimistic about Kershaw making good on his promise to “get back quick.”

“He’s going to continue to ramp up,” Roberts said. “How aggressively? I think that’s going to depend on the medical staff. But they’ve got their eyes on him.”

Roberts said he planned to talk with Kershaw to see if the injured left-hander will make the Dodgers’ 10-day, three-city road trip beginning in Atlanta next week.

“For me it’s the thought of being on an airplane, what’s best for his back, how much is he going to get out of being on the road with us. I’ll defer to him,” Roberts said. We want to make sure the right people (from the training staff) have eyes on him.

“I don’t even want to speculate but it kind of makes sense that he stay here. But if he has this burning desire to travel then we’ll take that into consideration.”

Lefty deal

As Monday’s non-waiver trade deadline approaches, the Dodgers continue to be interested in adding a left-handed reliever to their bullpen mix with Baltimore’s Zach Britton and San Diego’s Brad Hand the most prominent names in play. The left-handed options in the Dodgers’ bullpen have thinned down to Luis Avilan and Edward Paredes (who made his major-league debut earlier this week) with Grant Dayton and Adam Liberatore on the DL.

Roberts sounds like he would appreciate adding a left-handed option. But he called it “a luxury” and indicated he doesn’t consider it a hardship because he has three right-handed setup men who have been very successful in retiring left-handed batters – Brandon Morrow (1 for 28 with nine strikeouts), Pedro Baez (13 for 67 with 12 strikeouts) and Josh Fields (nine for 57 with 16 strikeouts).

“I think you can ask any left-handed hitter if they would rather face a (right-handed) guy throwing 100 or a wipeout lefty, they’d probably still go right-hander throwing 100,” Roberts said. “But if that’s not in the cards, if it doesn’t make sense for our organization to do something like that, I feel very confident that Pedro, Brandon Morrow, Josh Fields and Kenley (Jansen) can get out a left-hander.”

Also

Right-hander Brandon McCarthy is scheduled to throw a bullpen session Sunday afternoon. McCarthy has not pitched since July 20 due to a recurring blister problem on his pitching hand. McCarthy will progress to a sim-game setting or possibly another bullpen session depending on how Sunday’s workout goes, Roberts said.

Bill Plunkett has covered everything from rodeo to Super Bowls to boxing (yeah, I was there the night Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear off) during a career that started far too long ago to mention and eventually brought him to the OC some time last century (1999 actually). He has been covering Major League Baseball for the Orange County Register since 2003, spending time on both the Angels and Dodgers beats.